Safeway

[snopes]

Comment: rumor...

- Safeway grocery store is such named because it was the last grocer to
desegregate.

[Lainie]

So, what, they changed the name to Safeway after they decided not to integrate?

[Swordmaster]

Well, yeah. Cuz they were still SAFE. They didn't allow any of them trouble makin' coloreds in their store.

Before that, they were just Way.

[GenYus234]

According to Safeway's company history, they were listed on the NYSE as "Safeway" as far back as 1928.

That aside, people didn't seem shy about putting "Whites Only" all over things during segregation, why wouldn't Safeway just call themselves "N----r Free Grocery" if that's what they were?

[Spam & Cookies-mmm]

According to Wikipedia (citing source: LA Times)

the company held a contest in 1925 to develop a new name, the result of which was Safeway. The original slogan was "an admonition and an invitation" to "Drive the Safeway; Buy the Safeway." [8] The point of the name was that the grocery operated on a cash-and-carry basis; it did not offer credit, as had been traditional for grocers. It was the "safe way" to buy because a family could not get into debt via its grocery bill (as many families did, especially during the Great Depression).

Do people just sit around the dinner table inventing offensive origins to words?

[Gutter Monkey]

There was definitely segregation in Safeway stores into at least the 1960s:

In Spokane, as African-American residents were constantly aware, a particularly northern brand of segregation thrived through the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s and even into the 1960s. It made for a relatively peaceful era of race relations, but at a price. It depended on white people and black people “staying in their place,” as more than one black resident has put it.

“Staying in their place” meant that black people were restricted to a relatively few restaurants, shops, hotels and jobs in Spokane, sometimes by policy, more often by social pressure. How intense was that social pressure? Listen to Jerrelene Williamson, now 68, tell about her experience breaking into the previously all-white occupation of grocery checker at a Spokane Safeway around 1965

http://spokaneracism.wordpress.com/2...on-in-spokane/

Of course, Safeway wasn't the only chain that acted this way, and segregation was widespread until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. According to Wikipedia the Safeway chain was named in 1925, so it's totally unfeasible that the name 'Safeway' was coined because they were the last grocer to desegregate. Many other grocery stores were practicing segregation decades after Safeway was named.



Here's an interesting article about the role of grocery stores in the history of segregation:
http://maxizip.com/2010/11/grocery-store-enterprises/